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Environmental Education

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The Palgrave Handbook of Global Sustainability

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Abstract

Environmental education is an essential component of a sustainable planet. A movement with over 50 years of history, lessons learnt and an imperative that increased knowledge results in actions that protect and restore our world. In a time where human influences continue to impact upon our planet’s limited resources, the need for effective environmental education has never been more urgent and necessary. Environmental education is an essential tool to successfully integrate the principles, values, and practices of sustainable development into all aspects of education and learning. Environmental education can now inform through science-driven practices, influence through policy, and empower action and transformative change on local, state, national, and international scales. Environmental educators have the knowledge, tools, and imperatives for sustainability, but we are running out of time.

This chapter aims to provide the reader with an understanding of how environmental education can be used as a critical tool for ensuring a sustainable future. With a focus on environmental education as a key pillar in the United Nations (UN) goals for the Decade of Sustainable Development, this chapter examines research that supports the practical application of environmental education. Understanding ways of environmentally educating in an engaging, relevant, and effective way is an essential tool for environmental educators and communicators. Hence, topics researched relate to which messages and key interpretation techniques of environmental education people respond most and least strongly to and how environmental educators can successfully evolve engagement into transformative action. As environmental educators, we need to ensure that learners have the practical skills and belief in their abilities to take action on sustainability challenges in real and meaningful ways.

Ultimately, this chapter encourages the reader to employ the best practice, gold standard in environmental education. Environmental education has an integral role to play as the most useful, accessible, and proven tool to educate, inform, inspire, and bring the message of sustainability home. It provides a vision and path from the social, environmental, and economic challenges faced today to the transformational change required if we are to adequately future-proof our citizens of tomorrow.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Science on the GO!, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

    Sally McPhee

Authors
  1. Sally McPhee
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Correspondence to Sally McPhee .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, USA

    Robert Brinkmann

Appendices

Appendix 1

“Layered” interpretive messages allow the audience to choose how far they go (Ham 2007)

Core message: The great barrier reef is under threat from human activities.

Layer 1: Land clearing, agriculture, and urban development along the North Queensland coastline have increased nutrients and sediments entering the GBR lagoon in the past 200 years.

Layer 2: Research shows that the growth rate of inshore corals is now lower than ever before. Corals are very sensitive to elevated nutrient, sediment, and temperature levels.

Layer 3: Case study: Farmers are adopting innovative sustainable land management practices to reduce nutrient and sediment loads in the catchments.

Appendix 2

Table 1: “Three philosophies of environmental education” (Huckle 1993)
Full size table

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McPhee, S. (2023). Environmental Education. In: Brinkmann, R. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Global Sustainability. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01949-4_78

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